Not a Victim
by Helen Palsgraf
Summary: A twist on the Franco affair storyline, where Maxie's sexual encounter with him was not, in fact, consensual, but rather, drug-induced sexual assault. In the immediate aftermath, she is in denial of this distinction. One-shot.


I found the storyline with Maxie jumping into bed with Franco a bit absurd, considering she never ended up sleeping with Johnny. Suddenly she jumps into bed with a random stranger? (Okay, yeah, it's James Franco, and I sure wouldn't kick him out of bed, but this is Freaky Death Artist Franco, not super-hot film star Franco.) Anyway. I thought it would have been a much more interesting storyline if, rather than making a bad choice to engage in consensual sex, Maxie had been the victim of drug-facilitated date rape. It would be something that Maxie, with her low sense of self-worth, constantly berating herself for her bad choices, would believe was her fault for putting herself into the situation (classic victim self-blaming) rather than admitting it was sexual assault.

_Franco makes references to them drinking Absinthe, which was banned in the States for a long time because it supposedly has hallucinogenic properties (it doesn't). However, maybe Franco's did, because maybe he slipped a little something extra into Maxie's besides sugar..._

_This is a one-shot right now, but it might end up merging with another story I've been working on and expand. If additional chapters pop up, that's what happened. Enjoy!_

* * *

Maxie Jones is not a victim.

When she thinks of victims, she can only think of Georgie. Sweet, innocent Georgie, full of life and goodness, brutally murdered by the psychopath she had naively befriended. But there was nothing sweet and innocent about Maxie, and therefore, she certainly couldn't be a victim.

She had never believed the rumors about Absinthe, but then there she was, in a psychedelic haze, having sex with the artist Franco. She could scarcely remember how she'd gotten there, blindfolded, laying in a chalk outline and photographed. Then Franco was cooking the absinthe… what did he call it? The Bohemian Method? She recalls something about a sugar cube. Was it even a sugar cube? She doesn't know now, she's not sure of anything now. She only remembers Franco starting to undress her. She remembers her surprise at him entering her, but she can't find the words to protest. The rest is merely a blur. She remembers gathering up her clothes and him dropping her back to her apartment at dawn, barely aware of how she got there and where she had been.

The panic begins to set in as she showers, trying to wash away the smell of him, trying to scrub away the guilt. Oh God, they'd had sex. Did he even use a condom? She hadn't wanted to have sex with him, that wasn't why she was there. Sure, she was desperate to book him for that photo shoot. She'd gone with him to his studio to persuade him to work for Crimson, not take her to bed. How did they even end up having sex? She doesn't know, and that frightens her. Whenever she trashes her life, she's at least in control. She's the one controlling the wrecking ball. So how did she end up drugged up and having sex with a stranger?

She hates herself, she decides. _This is all my fault. I was so desperate to book that shoot I ended up trashed and having sex with Franco. I always do this_, she thinks. _I always wreck my life._

_Spinelli can't know about this._ _Not only will he be devastated, but he'll refuse to believe it's my fault. He won't blame me. He'll think the best of me, and instead he'll believe I was… No, no, I wasn't. I wasn't._

_I'm not a victim._

Maxie quickly dresses and heads back out before Lulu wakes up. She's starting to regain her wits. _There's a 24 hour pharmacy around here somewhere_, she recalls. _The only thing worse than an unwanted sexual encounter is an unwanted pregnancy_.

She shakes off the feelings she's afraid to acknowledge. The ones where she's frightened and spinning out of control. Where she chokes down the sobs in her chest and pictures herself cold and lifeless in that chalk outline and even worse, in Franco's bed. She feels cold and lifeless. She feels cheap and disgusting. She feels…sick.

She calls in to work and spends the afternoon throwing up, a mixture of the alcohol, the morning after pill and whatever else is possibly in her system that she just doesn't want to know about. Spinelli calls to check on her, and she just texts him back. She can't talk to him, not yet. She doesn't want to give herself away; she can't let him know how she betrayed him.

_All my fault_, she thinks. _I'm not a victim. It's my fault._

She throws up again.


End file.
